Singapore Museum and Mt. Faber

It seems to rain every afternoon so I decided to visit a museum to at least keep dry for one of the two week-end days. The Singapore museum is actually amazingly good. I was impressed. You buy one ticket which gets you into all of the galleries. This month, or few months, they had a Pompeii exhibit which is as close I guess as I will ever get to Pompeii. You remember Josh we almost got there a few years ago but never made it. Remember the porter in Naples?

Anyway the display was fabulous with good explanations, a 3D video where we had to wear the special glasses and mosaics, statues, jewelry and all kinds of artifacts. The Romans were amazingly developed for their period in history.

However, what impressed me even more was the Singapore history museum. You were given an audio player ( which, of course, I could not figure out) and walked through two floors of numbers exhibitions taking us through the colonial period to the past war era. It was really good and I especially loved the world war two section. Obviously Singapore fell like a deck of cards.

Today I went to Mount Faber which overlooks the bay and Indonesia, not too far away. There are many "loops" where you can wind your way down and I saw some really interesting traditional Singapore houses ( or the old colonial sort), forests and gardens and of course great bathrooms. There was also an elevated path rising over the forest floor, only in Singapore you say!

By the way, on another note I went to the infamous bar area last night off of Orchard road where the expats go to drink after work. The music was so loud I never made it inside any of the bars...the music was virtually an assault on my ears!

Now I have a week to figure out what to do next week-end.

Birds of a feather

Had some interesting stories this week, highlighted by the female teacher being locked in the toilet and screaming for help. We had to take the door off, no mean feat. That was closely followed by a two students fighting. When I asked one student what they would like to say to the other, the first boy obviously said: " Please accept my apology." The second boy said: " I hope you die" When I asked him to think about it and try again he said: " I hope you die a slow agonizing death!"

Man, I have to get out more. Today I went to Jurong Bird Park which frankly was terrific. I have been looking forward to it for a long time but only got around to it today. It seems when they do something in Singapore they do it well. They advertise that they have the largest man made waterfall in the world...( in a bird park) which they say fast!!! I was really captivated by the colour, range and sounds that all of the birds made. I could have done without the shows, mind you, but the birds themselves were fantastic. As much as possible they were out in the open and flying or walking around. I especially enjoyed it because I got in for half price ( old age). I guess there has to be some advantages to getting old.

To-night I am going to a colleague's birthday party but will not be staying late, I hope, because tomorrow we have a run for hope leaving the school at 6 am. Aren't we lucky. It is the old Terry Fox run but it is called Run for Hope over here.

Last week I went to Sentosa Island to see the Barclay open and followed some golfers around, presumably no-ones because there was only one old Sikh guy following them around. I said to him I really feel better after watching them putt. What do you mean, he said. I said, did you see the guy wearing red, he missed a 5 foot putt...I could have done better or at least missed equally well. He told me he was the best golfer in India and was HIS SON!!! Woops again.

I have got to go and buy running shoes. 10 k run before the sun comes up.

Choices

There is a great Italian restaurant I go to across the street from my apartment that serves delicious food. My regular waitress, it turns out, dreams of becoming a teacher and does have her Master of Education from a Philippines university. Singapore, like everywhere else in the world, covets the limited professional spaces there are and limits the influx of immigrant professionals. Over the course of a few meals, I told the waitress I was in education and I could help get her a job. Where, she said. I told her I could get her a job with my old company in either Myanmar or Vietnam or perhaps even get her a job in a private school in Singapore. I went on to give her a number of other alternatives such as getting a teaching degree in Singapore since they are paying students to get a teaching degree, just like Ontario in the old days. Anyway, as I said, I gave her lots of options.

To-night, went I went for supper she was looking downright glum if not angry. I asked her what was wrong and she replied; “ you gave me too many choices?” What, I said. How could you have too many choices in life? She then explained that she was a Philippina, was lucky to have a job in Singapore and didn’t want to have to make any more decisions. Given the menu of choices I presented her with upset her equilibrium.

Daniel and Josh…you were so lucky to be born in a first world country where you constantly had a myriad of choices, from which school you wanted to attend to what kind of job you wanted. You also know, even now, if you tire of what you are doing there are literally lots of choices for different jobs. How lucky is that? Imagine being limited by only two choices in life? How would that change you as a person?

By the way, after dinner I went for an ice cream and waffle which was $5.50. I gave the teller $10.50 and told her to make the waffle and I would be back in ten minutes. As usual, I forgot to get the change and walked out the door for my walk. The teller rushed after me ( even though she knew I was coming back) and gave me my five dollars change! Only in Singapore.

Mahout for a day!

Having been there and done that, when I travel I really have to consider doing things other than the usual elephant show or posing with a long necked native. Maybe this time I went a little overboard, who knows. I signed up for a one day elephant trekking mahout training experience. What that means is I got picked up from the hotel, taken about an hour out of Chaing Mai and put in an elephant camp with a real mahout. The first thing he told me was to get up on the elephant and sit on its head. I am rather used to climbing a tall tower and gently lowering myself onto an elephant from about 10 feet high into a nice chair! Get up on the head? How do I do that pray tell?

You give the command in Thai to lift one

leg, which you stand on, then grab the top of the ear and a fatty part of the body and lift yourself up. Once there, you slide forward, take the poker stick and start giving commands and kicking in the appropriate spot that is, on the left side to go right and the right side to go left and then moving your body backwards to get the elephant to go backwards and so on. Somehow I survived that ordeal ( turning and standing in one spot) and was quite willing to walk down to the river beside the elephant to give him his bath. Unfortunately, the real mahout would not hear of it and he insisted on walking beside the elephant when I sat on the head and did my thing. It was a scary 10-15 minutes as I made my way down the path and engineered the elephant into the water where I proceeded to bath him before I took a raft down the river, or am I getting ahead of myself.

After the elephant ride, I took a bamboo raft down some river or other to a lunch spot, where I took a Thai cooking class…sure, this is now the area of fantasy. I did not take the Thai cooking class.

I had a long

week-end because Singapore celebrates every ethnic/religious day going and this was Depavali so Wednesday night I searched for a plane ticket out of Singapore and came up with Chiang Mai believe it or not. Having never been here before , I did the usual search thingy, found a hotel within the old city of Chaing Mai within the original walls and looked for an adventure. My area had a lot of travel guys suggesting this tour or other but I told them I wanted something different so they organized it all by telephone and I had a personal tour. The price was unbelievable, but this is Thailand remember. I did the Mahout training thing, a river rafting experience, lunch and then a visit to a local village for about $50 ( in a private car and tour leader who happened to be a mahout!)

To-day back to Singapore and school. We just finished a great Deepavali assembly Bollywood style and now have to prepare for the Moslem Haj production in about 2 weeks with November 11^th thrown in for good luck. Should be a busy two weeks before my next vacation.